00:00You're going to fall in love with these animals after watching this short video.
00:03Here's a small sample, and now I'll tell you why they're taking the world by storm.
00:09with the help of Colombian researchers.
00:12Let's start with a cocktail fact.
00:14Bats are the second most abundant group of mammals after rodents.
00:19There are just over 1,500 species distributed across all continents,
00:23with the exception of the poles, of course, and one or two islands.
00:26After the pandemic, journalism and social media haven't done bats much justice.
00:32And well, due to some of our own preconceived notions, we don't really appreciate them that much either.
00:37But look how wonderful they are.
00:40They are the only mammals capable of flight and also have the incredible ability to echolocate.
00:47which is like a system that allows them to emit high-frequency sounds,
00:50with which they can even build a detailed portrait of the insect they are going to hunt in the dark.
01:00In addition, they pollinate flowers, disperse seeds, and control populations of other animals.
01:06But why am I talking to you about bats today?
01:10For almost a few days, a group of 137 researchers from 64 countries published in the prestigious journal Nature
01:17This may be the greatest effort to understand the evolutionary history of these fascinating animals
01:23and they found wonderful things.
01:26For example, they solved some of the most unsettling mysteries,
01:30such as the moment in their evolution when they began to fly
01:33and in which they acquired the ability to echolocate.
01:37Furthermore, they found that the origin of these flying mammals is different from what we thought.
01:43It's not Africa, it's not North America, and it's not Asia.
01:46They suggest it's Europe.
01:48Behind this research are years and years of collecting samples from all over the world
01:53DNA sequencing, bats, computational tools, and statistical models
01:59which allowed them to build what scientists call the phylogenetic tree of bats.
02:05Something like a tree that shows how they have evolved from a common ancestor
02:11which they place at 65 million years.
02:15And among its main authors is a Colombian, Professor Liliana Dávalos,
02:20a biologist from the University of Valle who did her doctorate in Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology.
02:25Today he heads a laboratory at Stony Brook University in the United States,
02:30from where he led several of those analyses.
02:33But there are also other authors who are here in Colombia, such as Maylin González,
02:38leader of the genetics team at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute,
02:41Paola Pulido Santa Cruz, currently a professor at the School of Engineering Sciences of the University of Rosario,
02:46and Dani Rojas, the director of the Department of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at Javeriana University in Cali.
02:53In 2019, they were all part of a group that traveled on an expedition to the municipality of Santa María, in
03:00Boyacá.
03:01There they obtained samples from several species of bats,
03:05and the gelome of one of those individuals was included in the analysis published in the journal Nature.
03:11We spoke with all of them to better understand why this mission to sequence the genome was so important.
03:16Identifying the 21 families of bats has been a titanic task,
03:20And why, as everyone says, does it open doors for researchers from all over the world?
03:24to investigate some of the genes that make these animals so unique,
03:30such as their resistance to some diseases and their longevity.
03:34As Professor Dávalos says, it is unheard of among mammals.
03:37that some bats weigh only 10 grams, but live up to 40 years.
03:43But if you want to know more about this incredible story
03:45and take a break amidst so much unease,
03:48Stop by the Science section of El Espectador
03:50And follow us on our social media channels, because more stories are coming soon.
03:55Bye.
03:55Bye.
